Interesting Links for 24-11-2011
Nov. 24th, 2011 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewducker- Jawbones are shaped by diet. Chew harder if you want enough space for your teeth!
- "Community" takes three years to set up a joke. I really hope it doesn't get cancelled.
- Amazon locks person out of their account with $1000 worth of ebooks in it.
- What's Wrong with OKCupid's Matching Algorithm? Fascinating analysis
- The best response I've seen to the Frank Miller/OWS stuff. Hilarious, and _right_.
- Psychopaths' brains show differences in structure and function
- Marvellous gallery of photoshops of The Pepper-Spray Cop.
- From Lascaux to The Sex Pistols, history begins and ends with graffiti
- Government says its policies will increase electricity prices, and reduce bills.
- Humans are unique amongst animals in having a Middle Age.
- 'Brinicle' ice finger of death filmed in Antarctic
- How to Deal with Family Members that Stress You Out or Drive You Crazy
- Interesting things are afoot on The Pacific Rim (USA swaying countries away from China)
- Leonardo da Vinci's earth-shattering insights about geology and fossils.
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no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 11:16 am (UTC)The average home-owner, presumably... not the average renter who doesn't have options as far as purchasing appliances, installing meters or insulation.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 11:20 am (UTC)Also, most people are _rubbish_ at actually weighing up long-term gains against short-term costs.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 11:23 am (UTC)Plenty of rental companies (mine included) specify which power suppliers you have to be with for example. So saying "oh people can just change whenever they like" ignores a large selection of people these days.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 11:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 12:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 02:28 pm (UTC)The have two policies
*increase energy costs
*decrease costs of energy-saving measures; hopefully thereby bringing down the demand for energy.
They claim that these two policies will combine to cause a net financial gain for many/most people.
I don't think this is an inherently unreasonable thing to suppose might happen. Although of course whether it actually will happen depends on the detailed implementation; I am not especially hopeful about the plan as proposed.
Of course they could simply do the second thing. However a)the increased revenue collected per-unit-energy is likely to be important, especially in renewable generation and b)the increased cost of energy is more likely to push people towards looking into energy-saving measures, saying "avoid higher costs" can work better than "have lower costs" especially where people are used to the current costs.
IMHO a great many (perhaps even most) households in the UK are wasting a great deal of energy through not taking advantage of tried-and-tested energy-saving measures that would significantly reduce their energy use without decreasing the benefits that they get from that energy (house no colder, fridge no warmer, etc). Prodding people in the direction of dealing with this situation seems a pretty good policy to me; the major failing is how to force landlords to properly insulate their rented-out properties.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 04:04 pm (UTC)IIRC the UK could spend some £2bn on domestic energy saving measures and households would be better off so there is plenty of scope for beneficial energy saving measures at a household level.
Cuba increased electricity prices threefold some years ago because Cubans were just wasting power and they kept having brown outs. The sudden price shock appears to have concentrated their minds but I think I would have to view any news story coming out of Cuba with sceptism.
The thing that rarely gets discussed is the premium one puts on energy security and price smoothness.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 09:46 pm (UTC)this is something I'm extremely keen on [I don't use heating, no matter how cold it gets] but can't afford.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 12:44 pm (UTC)He said some things that lots of comic book geeks disagreed with.
Yeah, and...?
In real life, most people at any one time don't agree with you. And most people realise this. Regardless of your political views, most people don't share them. In fact, Mr Miller's political views seem to be more mainstream than say Alan Moore's. Alan Moore describes himself as an anarchist. That's quite a niche political position, so I would guess that there are more people holding different political views to Alan Moore than there are holding different political views to Frank Miller.
Regardless of this, what I find really bizarre is the people you see saying they will never read anything by Frank Miller again. If your mind is so closed that you will only read works by authors with the same political views as you, and you choose your reading material accordingly, then you are missing out on so much.
This is especially so in geek culture, where some of our great figures hold or held extremely unpleasant political views. (H.P., China... I'm looking in your direction...)
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 12:51 pm (UTC)and they disagreed back :->
I have to admit that I wouldn't stop reading Frank Miller because he has views I find dissociated from reality (or Alan Moore). In this case I'm not likely to buy much Frank Miller because he hasn't produced anything good in the last decade or so.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 01:19 pm (UTC)Classics:
Batman: Year One
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
Sin City
Things which some people like and some don't:
Give Me Liberty
Things which are great fun and ridiculously over-the-top:
The Big Guy and Rusty, The Boy Robot (Godzilla vs a giant robot)
Hard Boiled (more violence than you can shake a violent stick at, doesn't take itself even slightly seriously)
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 01:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 01:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 01:26 pm (UTC)I'd probably read Year One first, just for chronological reasons :->
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 09:49 pm (UTC)some of the latter books are of surprising depth and beauty.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 01:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 09:51 pm (UTC)I was left with an exactly opposing view of Rorschach. My Rorschach would have been out there, piling into abusive coppers and throwing bank execs out of windows.
fascinating :)
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 01:20 pm (UTC)Sometimes those views really are espoused in the work (but were there all along to greater or lesser extent, so why the hell did the person only object now), sometimes they're conventions of the genre (an example would be varying degrees of right wing views in superhero comics) and other times the person is outright imagining it.
I'd imagine the thinking is that their boycotting of said comic or whatever is a way of taking a stand. Frank Miller's political views will undoubtedly be looked back on like the casual racism in some Lovecraft stories - it's a product of the time (unfortunately).
Much like Dave Sim, Frank Miller's political views/philosophy have always been on display, just to a greater extent as time goes on.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 01:25 pm (UTC)I like China Mieville's statement on this:
"I’m not a leftist trying to smuggle in my evil message by the nefarious means of fantasy novels. I’m a science fiction and fantasy geek. I love this stuff. And when I write my novels, I’m not writing them to make political points. I’m writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism, and what I want to do is communicate that. But, because I come at this with a political perspective, the world that I’m creating is embedded with many of the concerns that I have... I’m trying to say I’ve invented this world that I think is really cool and I have these really big stories to tell in it and one of the ways that I find to make that interesting is to think about it politically. If you want to do that too, that’s fantastic. But if not, isn’t this a cool monster?"
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 01:38 pm (UTC)(see also the discussion of whether Bilbo existed in a technological system which allowed for the production of shiny buttons suited to placing on waistcoats.)
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 01:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 02:25 pm (UTC)The second is, I think most people are happy with some disagreement. But it hardly seems surprising that being called theives and rapists, idiots, anti-americans, with overtones of "anything you think is so stupid it's not worth listing to" and formenting anti-Islamic feeling, and blaming them for exercising their first amendment rights, is going to provoke strong reactions from people? It seems pretty obvious that people are going to be pissed off.
Guadian on Frank Miller
Date: 2011-11-25 01:26 am (UTC)Re: Guadian on Frank Miller
Date: 2011-11-25 08:01 am (UTC)